Women take to streets to protest against gender violence
Protesters clash with the police during a demonstration to commemorate the International Women’s Day in Mexico City, Mexico on Monday. Photo: AFP
Tens of thousands on Monday defied coronavirus restrictions, gathering worldwide on International Women’s Day to denounce gender violence and inequalities.
Women took to the streets in peaceful democracies and in countries gripped by conflict, though in far smaller numbers than 2020, when the full force of the COVID-19 pandemic had yet to hit the world.
Thousands marched in Mexico City, bringing with them photos with the names of alleged rapists, murderers and harassers of women.
“Together we are the fire, burn everything,” said one banner in the crowd, some of whom angrily kicked at a wooden fence around the Monument to the Revolution.
“My daughter was raped. I am grateful that she is alive,” 45-year-old Leticia Resendiz told AFP.
Thousands of women also marched in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which has seen a wave of femicide that has claimed on average one life per day so far in 2021.
Clashes broke out in Chile, as police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse thousands of protesters who painted the slogan “They are killing us” on the esplanade next to Plaza Italia, in central Santiago.
More than 100 activists wearing purple to symbolize women’s struggle gathered outside the prosecutor’s office in Honduras to demand justice for nurse Keyla Martinez, 26, who died in police custody in February.
Honduras’ human rights watchdog says 4,769 women were murdered in the country between 2010 and 2020.
In France, where one woman is killed every three days by their partner or ex-partner, according to 2019 government figures, tens of thousands marched in major cities to call for stronger police action against femicide.
Thousands marched elsewhere in Istanbul and Ankara, many of them angered by a recent video purporting to show an attack on a woman by her ex-husband in front of their five-year-old child in the country.
AFP
